, 1887-08-03

(the Daily Telegraph

(N6 OUtty ActCyF0PH'J
"Star-eycd Science" in person might well
have presided yesterday evening Goth.
June) at the BANQUET of honour given to
Professor TynlaH. Nobody has served her
with q more devoted, allfayconstant worship,
and few living men have won from her
hands gifts more delicate and precious
wherewith to enrich the Victorian age.
But, indeed, Science may be considered
as having been present on this deeply
interesting occasion, 6 O numerous were
those representatives of her in all the bran
ches of physical research who had gathered
round the chairman, Professor Stokes, to
testify their respect for Johu Tyndall, and
their regrets that advancing age and the
fatigue attendant upon long lab0urs had
obliged him to retire from active duties III
connection with the Royal Society. He
succeeded Faraday in that institution, and
it would be sufficient praise to say that he
has well filled the chair rendered so illus.
triOus by the great experimentalist. An
IIishman by birth, for DR.. Tyndall halls
from county Carlow, where he was born
in 1920, he started in humble life with no
favONrs Fl Om fortune. Down to 1874, his
youth and first manhood were passed with
little reference to the subjects which were
afterwards to engrOSS him; but in 1917 he
obtained his first scientific appointment in
greenwood College, and after this he def
nitely entered the path of philosophy and
physics. The Universities of Marburg and
Berlin taught the young Irishman all they
knew by the lectures of BunSen and Mag.
nus and, guided by them and the disco
veries of Faraday, he worked hard and
successfully at d%iamagnetism and the mag
netic and optical properties of crystals.
Elected a fellow of the Royal Society i'll
1853, he went to Switzerland shortly after
wards with Professor Huxley, and there
they studied the phenomena of the high
Alps, and the slow but wonderful motion
of glaciers. On one occasion during these
Investigations Tynhall spent three days
and three nights in binding snow, that he
might measure thef winter movements Of
the Mer de Glacet He has never lost his
love for playground of Europe"
which his genius turned into Q laboratory
of science; for upon those great mountains
he tried a hundred experiments on the pu-
rity of the upper air, its colour, its pro-
perties, the forms Of water in snow and
ice and nAvA, the passage OF sounds, the
genesis of crystals, and the germ theory.
Absorbed in such pursuits and the fascinat-
ing problems arising from them, DR.. Tyn-
dali has had no time to become rich; and
the Governments of the day have had no
sense, apparently, atoy see the absurdity of
raising from time to time a squad of me-
diocpe men to AaHoRr, while such as he
remains undseor9ted aud untitled. Per-
haps he scdl4sA distinctions shared with
the motley crew, RsIlfS marked his disre-
gard of weditteiwJi9li having cleared fifteen
thousand doIIarsBS hisIAmerican lectures,
he handed oversztis9teHtFei sum to educa-
tional authorities inithe United States to
establish a fund for the assistance of stu.
dents in physical science, Save for the
honours bestowed on him by the Universi.
ty of Oxford, and when he entered the
Royal Society in 1853. he remains plain
job n Tyndall.
If it was to Faraday that Tyndalr has
owed the direction given to his analytical
genius, and to Germany that we must as
cribe his precise and erudite methods, Ire.
land should have the credit of the bright
gifts of Imagination and ~eloquence which